Students, staff, volunteers and dignitaries mark the official opening of Altadore School's Owl's Nest Too edible garden on Thursday October 13, 2016. The approximately 1/4 acre garden was created over 2 years with over 7000 volunteer hours. Gavin Young/PostmediaGavin Young / Postmedia

It’s a kinder garden that’s feeding the hungry and a youthful sense of wonder.

Students at Altadore School are bringing in the harvest from a series of vegetable patches planted on school property that principal Dr. Alex Mckay says is unique in the country.

On Thursday, staff, students and their families celebrated their vegetable haul with arts performances and soup produced from their toil, and served in ceramic bowls they crafted.

“There are no other gardens in the city and probably the country where students have a contract with fairy gardeners,” said Mckay, who guides the school at 4506 16th St. S.W.

Those fairy gardeners are adults living in the surrounding inner-city community who tend the plants during the summer season while their kindergarten-to-Grade 6 student partners are on vacation.

“When they return in September, there’s a beautiful, thriving garden,” said Mckay.

But the students are very much immersed in the progress of their vegetables, which have included potatoes, peas, radishes, carrots, tomatoes and even some varieties that teachers didn’t expect would grow in Calgary’s fickle climate, said the principal.

“They’ve even grown asparagus, string zucchinis and small melons,” he said.

So far, about 180 kilograms of the produce has been donated to the Calgary Drop-In Centre and Inn From the Cold, with another 90 kilograms likely to follow, said Mckay.

It’s a lesson for students on the sad realities of need in the community and the spirit of giving, he said.

But it’s also an education in food, culture, science and “lots of experiential opportunities by playing a part in planting, tending and harvesting, and a little bit of sampling,” said Mckay.

It was surprising, he said, how so many of the city kids had little idea of how vegetables grow, adding they were eager to discover.

“They got down on their hands and knees and dug down into the potato plots to see how it grows,” said Mckay.

“To them, it was like magic. They loved it.”

The program is also an opportunity for the students’ adult partners — many of them seniors — who lack garden space to grow some of their own food, he said.

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